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News Bias

All Sources Are Not Created Equal

Published onOct 17, 2022
News Bias
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Material:

  • Three or four articles, from four different sources, on the same story. For instance: a high-profile or controversial game, as covered by the local press of the two opposing teams and by the national press.

 Rationale:

The purpose of this exercise is to get students to think about why sources differ and why that matters.

Preparation:

The instructor selects a story from the news, preferably one that is not open to extreme divergence of views based on one's general political outlook.  The articles should be short, to allow students to read them during class.  The instructor should prepare the articles by removing any identifying information, and putting them side-by-side, e.g., in columns (see the example below).

In-Class Setup:

To preface the exercise, the instructor should ask students whether they are familiar with the story, inviting students who are to share information about it with their peers.

Group Activity:

Students should be assigned to small groups and invited to read and discuss the articles, looking for similarities and differences, and thinking about what those differences tell us about the possible provenance of the story.  Groups should write down their guesses on a piece of paper, which should be given to the instructor. Once groups have had the opportunity to discuss the stories, the instructor should review with the entire group the guesses that have been submitted for each story.  During this stage, groups and individual students should be invited to explain their guesses.  The instructor should draw attention to particularly good questions, as they arise, that readers should keep in mind when assessing news sources.

Review of Results:

In the next stage, the instructor reveals the actual sources, inviting students to reassess their criteria and guesses, in light of information about their provenance.  This is a good time to point out examples of misinformation that is likely to be motivated by a broader political agenda or outlook.

Discussion:

In the final stage of the exercise, the instructor leads a discussion about lessons learned during the process.  Which questions and criteria were particularly useful in formulating a hypothesis about the sources?  How could the same criteria and questions help a reader assess the validity of sources and stories, as she tries to stay informed about her world?

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